YuMe Go Programmatic with ‘Video Reach’ (and Cookie-less Targeting)

YuMe, a video ad technology business, announced this week that they are launching ‘Video Reach’, a new programmatic product that will allow YuMe’s publishers to tap into the ever-growing programmatic demand. While programmatic trading has been around a while now, YuMe’s version of it is particularly interesting as it’s SDK-based (as opposed to using the VAST standard) and doesn’t depend on cookies. Here Ed Haslam, SVP Marketing at YuMe, explains how the technology works and what YuMe will be bringing to the video market.

Congratulations on the launch. Could you provide a little bit of background on Video Reach? Does what you’ve built fit one of the standard industry acronyms – an SSP perhaps?

Video Reach is our new programmatic video advertising offering, specifically designed for trading desks and TV brand advertisers. Video Reach enables them to complement their digital video buys with the efficiency, TV-scale reach and accuracy of programmatic video buying. Video Reach is a premium programmatic offering and serves as a trusted supply source for high-quality, 100 percent in-stream multi-screen video advertising inventory. So yes, as you mentioned, you can think of it as a SSP for a trading desk.

Why has YuMe finally decided to programmatic and how will Video Reach fit with your existing business?

Delivery of premium video advertising inventory programmatically is a natural business extension for YuMe and driven by the need for improved efficiencies around planning and buying multi-screen video advertising inventory. TV brand advertisers buy network and cable in primetime and other day parts to maximize reach and optimize costs. Similarly, TV, Connected Audience Network and Video Reach combined extends the options for reaching audiences with different capabilities and costs.

Seeing the growing need for programmatic premium from brand advertisers, we’ve developed Video Reach. We anticipate Video Reach will appeal to both trading desks and TV brand advertisers who are looking for efficiency, scale and first-party targeting, across all screens, as well as some existing YuMe customers, who wish to diversify their video buys. We believe the launch of Video Reach to be a complement to our Connected Audience Network, allowing us to serve distinctive needs across the campaign objectives of any brand campaign. This is a natural consequence of the consumer increased share of time spent on digital screens vs. traditional TV, brands require a variety of channels to reach their increasingly fragmented audience.

Many programmatic vendors are offering mobile/tablet and connected TV advertising. Is YuMe’s SDK-based targeting on these devices different to what’s currently on the market?

Video Reach brings two distinct advantages over programmatic solutions currently in the marketplace – first-party data science-powered audience targeting through SDK-integration and multi-screen reach without the use of cookies. Most programmatic solutions for video advertising today utilize traditional cookie-based targeting hence can only work in web-based environments. YuMe’s first-party data science solution transcends cookies and allows for true multi-screen targeting in app environments such as mobile, tablet and connected TV apps, as well as web for true cross platform reach, due to its deep, multi-screen Audience Aware SDK integrations. We provide a single view to target, optimize and report across screens. Our SDK-approach gives us access to a very unique set of data that no one else has that powers our targeting and data sciences engines.

A considerable amount of buy-side data is tied up in cookies. Does SDK targeting allow advertisers to use their own data?

SDK-based technology allows for utilization of advertisers’ data for audience targeting. Video Reach advertisers can use their own audience data and leverage our first-party audience data we gather via multi-screen SDKs to take audience targeting to the next level. Our framework is flexible to accept a variety of audience data to cater the needs of brand advertisers for finding connected audiences across platforms.

Are there any benefits to SDK-based targeting from a privacy perspective?